


Anniversary

by von_gelmini



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Harry Hart Lives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5344100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/von_gelmini/pseuds/von_gelmini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year later, Merlin sends Eggsy back to where it all started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Go Back To The Beginning

Merlin's sent him on a bloody goose chase. Eggsy swears he's done it on purpose, sending him to the police station that knows him too well. Where he'll be stared at and thought to have escaped one of the questioning rooms. And... where he first met _him_.

His life has been hanging by a nearly worn-through thread since V-day. He chases assignment after assignment, the more dangerous the better. Anything to keep the adrenaline pumping. To keep him too busy to think. Because thinking... well that ain't too healthy, innit? Healthier trying to dodge a hail of bullets, running to escape the blowback from an explosion, jumping out of a fourth floor window. Healthier to do just about anything but think.

He's sat in a room (on the right side of the two-way glass) for over an hour waiting for that "urgent" file Merlin sent him for. Clerks duck in and out apologizing for the wait, assuring him they'll find it right away. He curses the bloody Scot again for not giving him time to kit out in his Kingsman suit before sending him to this fuckin' place. He's sure if he looked like... like him... that file'd been in his hand within two minutes.

Finally the clerk who drew the short straw tells him they can't find it. Must've been sent on to the Yard already. Eggsy just huffs and rolls his eyes. He knows it's not the poor woman's fault but he can't help shooting her a look. A gentleman doesn't do that and so he apologizes sincerely immediately, not leaving until the poor thing feels better about herself.

He saves his ire for the man on the other end of his earpiece. (Ye not be needin' the glasses lad. Just let me know through this when ye've collected the package.) He heads out the door sending a stream of colorful curses through his 'bluetooth' earpiece. Starts running down the steps two at a time, eager to continue his exploration of the more scatological aspects of the English language in person.

"Eggsy. Would you like a lift home?"

He's frozen in his steps. Those words. And that voice. He'll never forget that voice. He rips the earpiece off and throws it in the street. Watches as a car crushes beneath its tires. He can feel tears on his cheek and he's not giving that bastard who was on the other end any fuel to ground him from missions ever again. He's fine. Nothing wrong here. Just bloody hallucinating. Lost his fucking mind. He squeezes his eyes shut hard, trying to block the tears, only making them come faster.

He doesn't turn to look. "Who're you?"

"The man who should've told you something a long time ago."

"Wot's that then?"

He can feel the air move next to him. Warm. Aren't ghosts supposed to be cold? He doesn't dare look. Hearing voices is one thing. Seeing shit a whole 'nother level.

Fingers touch his chin (oh God how he remembers that touch) and turn his head towards the wall. That same wall where a year ago (to the bloody fuckin' day fuck you Merlin)...

Lips brush his. He remembers how surprised he'd been at their softness.

"I love you."

His voice cracks, balanced on the edge between manly tears and ugly sobbing, and losing the battle.

"Harry?"

"Open your eyes, darling."

Fuck it. So what if he's started seeing things. He can think of worse things to see than the ghost of...

"Harry!"


	2. To Start All Over Again

"You're a bloody fool."

He's heard it a dozen times since he came out of the coma, still alive thanks to Valentine being a shit shot with a sensitive gag reflex around blood. And thanks to the bulletproof upgrade Merlin put on every pair of Kingsman glasses slowing the bullet down before it hit him. He may owe his life to his friend, but that didn't mean he was going to take his advice.

"Not yet. Not until I know if I…" He sighed. There was no way he was going to saddle that bright young man with the broken invalid husk of who he'd been.

His hand still trembled. His left eye was gone, covered with a patch. It was too soon to kit him with a glass one and Merlin was still working on a tech replacement. And then there were his legs. More times than not, they just collapsed beneath him when he tried to walk. The doctors said he should be grateful to still have any movement in them. It was the fall, not the gunshot that did them in. A cracked vertebrae. Lucky the EMT knew enough not to move him wrong.

"I can't have him see me like this."

Merlin shook his head, muttering as he left the medical bay. "Keep on and he'll not be seein' ye at all."

… … …

Harry blinked and looked at himself in the mirror.

"It's a good match," Merlin said. 

"Yes, but it's glass. My binocular vision's gone. I can't hit a target at 5 meters, much less 50."

"The only thing Arthur has to hit is a waste paper basket at two feet."

Harry glared at him. He'd assumed the mantle Chester King let fall, but only with the agreement that it look to all the outside world as if Merlin had. Harry did the work while the handler was his mouthpiece. But the fact that his injuries had consigned him to a desk job still rankled.

"How are the optics coming?"

"He doesn't love ye for your weapons score." That only got Merlin another glare. "Slowly. It's the bloody neural interface. It's a damn sight more difficult than 'just make me glasses for inside my eye' ye prick. it could be months yet. Ye gonna make him wait that long?"

Harry huffed, pushing the mirror table away. He hammed up his uneven gait, false-wincing in pain as he made his way back to the hospital bed. 

"I get the message. And you're still a bloody fool."

… … …

Five months after V-day and the mirror still wasn't Harry's friend. His hair had grown back evenly and was styled. But a line of stark white cut through the brown, following the scar. Valentine's bullet entered his missing eye and cut through the orbit, exiting near his temple and then running a groove back into his hairline. 

The doctor said it had missed the important brain functions, just nicking the frontal and temporal lobes. It left him less able to feel pain and notice if he was hungry. He'd learnt to set timers for the latter and to do a regular visual check of his extremities for missed injuries for the former. It also left him quicker to anger and prone to riskier behavior.

"Oh great," Merlin had said with a dramatic eyeroll. "Just what we need. Galahad with an even worse temper and love for danger. That's a winning combination."

"I'm not Galahad any longer," Harry said with a twinge of self-indulgent sadness.

"No. He is," Merlin said angrily. "And with an even bigger death wish than you had after his father died."

Harry winced. He turned to listen to the doctor's final report. The tremor in his right hand and the twitch in his good eye was almost gone and would heal completely soon. His physical therapy was progressing remarkably well. He'd gone from wheelchair to walking frame to double crutches faster than anyone had expected. Though he'd finally reached a plateau. It was likely he'd use a walking stick indefinitely.

Merlin settled his hand comfortingly on Harry's shoulder. "I'll get the Minions on it. Modify your Rainmaker for strength. Maybe fit a few more goodies for ye."

Harry nodded, closing his eyes for a deep breath. His friend was, as his boy had said, the gov'nah.

Merlin waited for the medical staff to leave. "So I can tell him?"

Harry shook his head.

Merlin exploded, tossing his beloved clipboard across the room. "I don't know how much longer I can keep him alive! He keeps asking for the worst missions. And if I dinnae give him them, he sinks right down t' where next time Lancelot might not get there before his mind turns in on himself. Vanity is one thing but…"

Harry interrupted him, saying a date. 

Merlin opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again before he gave up and just shook his head. The significance of that date wasn't lost on him. 

"You're a right bastard and a fuckin' peacock, Harry Hart." He shook his head again as he headed for the door. "I'll keep him alive until then. Thank you Merlin," he continued on, muttering loud enough for Harry to hear him. "Thank you for leaving me to wallow in my guilt and self-pity while the man I profess to love tries every which way from Sunday to get himself killed. Bloody wanker." The door shut and on the opposite side of it Merlin shouted back, "If it were me, I'd blow your fuckin' head off. And aim this time!"

Harry chuckled. "Good thing he's not you then." 

… … …

He made sure Merlin sent Eggsy on a fool's errand first thing in the morning, a year to the day that he met his beautiful boy. He'd watched him enter the police station from his spot in the black cab parked across the street.

Merlin had reinforced the shaft of his Rainmaker to hold his weight when he needed to lean on it. Which was still too often for his liking. But Merlin was right. He was a bloody peacock and he'd always loved to make an entrance. He wasn't perpetually late for nothing. But today he was right on time.

He could've waited for Eggsy at the foot of the stairs. But that wasn't where he'd been a year ago. This time he held the rail and used his umbrella as he climbed to the mid-stair landing. If he leaned a little heavier against the wall while he waited for the appointed hour, well no one would know but him. 

"Not yet," he said to Merlin on the other end of his glasses. He'd wanted to wear the optics prototype, but when he put it in last night, it had given him a splitting headache. The glass eye would have to do. At least it was hidden behind his sunglasses. 

Merlin cursed in his ear. "You're gonna wait until the exact minute, aren't ye."

Harry chuckled. "I've come this far. Might as well do it right."

"He's going to knock ye on ye arse and I'll be laughin'."

"Tsk Merlin. Making fun of the less fortunate." Harry clicked the coms off to a string of swearing almost unintelligible for the thick brogue his friend slipped into.

Harry almost missed it. He came bounding out of the station fast, giving Merlin a rush of cursing that made anything the Scot had given him the past six months seem like a sonnet. 

"Eggsy. Would you like a lift home?" 

The boy stopped so suddenly that Harry thought he would fall from it. He saw him toss away his com unit. Watched as the tears slipped from under closed lashes. 

"Who're you?"

A bloody big fool, he thought, seeing the pain on Eggsy's face. They each spoke their lines, moving through the play Harry'd written in his mind since he first woke up. They hit their marks (none of them being Eggsy's fist to Harry's face, thankfully). But the boy still wouldn't look at him.

"Open your eyes, darling."

Crying his name, Eggsy leapt into Harry's arms, nearly toppling them both. Harry reached behind himself for the railing, easing them back to lean against the wall.

His umbrella and the boy's hat had fallen somewhere, but neither cared. Eggsy buried his face in his neck, breathing deeply through ragged sobs. Harry kissed the top of his head, holding him close and rubbing circles into his back.

"It's all right. I'm here. I'm here." He took Eggsy's face in his hands, turning it up and finally kissing him properly.


End file.
